PESHAWAR: Two bombs minutes apart struck tribal police assigned to guard polio workers in northwest Pakistan, killing 11, police said.
Police official Nawabzada Khan said the first of the two bombs struck an escort vehicle in the Lashora village of Jamrud tribal region in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
It wounded six officers, but caused no deaths.
Khan said minutes later, another roadside bomb struck a convoy of tribal police officers dispatched there to transport victims of the first attack, killing 11 officers and wounding six.
He said gunmen also opened fire on officers, triggering a shootout that was still going on.
A government administrator Nasir Khan said they had launched a massive hunt in effort to trace and arrest the attackers.
He confirmed 11 deaths and 12 injuries.
No one claimed responsibility for the two separate bombings, but anti-polio teams or their guards have been frequently targeted in Pakistan by militants, who say the campaigns are a tool for spying and claim the vaccine makes boys sterile.
Pakistan is one of the few remaining countries where polio persists. In most cases the disease is found in the northwest, where militants make it difficult to reach children for vaccination.
Also Saturday, a bomb targeting security forces in the southwestern province of Baluchistan killed three soldiers and wounded six others, the paramilitary Frontier Corps said.
In a statement, it said the soldiers were traveling through the border village of Washuk when a bomb hit their vehicle.
Washuk lies 400 km south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, where separatists have been fighting a bloody insurgency against the Pakistani government for decades.
Bombs kill 11 Pakistan police guarding polio teams
Bombs kill 11 Pakistan police guarding polio teams
US border agent shoots and wounds two people in Portland
- The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement
A US immigration agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland, Oregon, authorities said on Thursday, leading local officials to call for calm given public outrage over the ICE shooting death of a Minnesota woman a day earlier.
“We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more,” Portland police chief Bob Day said in a statement.
The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The statement said the driver, a suspected Venezuelan gang member, attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over the agents. In response, DHS said, “an agent fired a defensive shot” and the driver and a passenger drove away.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the circumstances of the incident.
Portland police said that the shooting took place near a medical clinic in eastern Portland. Six minutes after arriving at the scene and determining federal agents were involved in the shooting, police were informed that two people with gunshot wounds — a man and a woman — were asking for help at a location about 2 miles (3 km) to the northeast of the medical clinic.
Police said they applied tourniquets to the man and woman, who were taken to a hospital. Their condition was unknown.
The shooting came just a day after a federal agent from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a separate agency within the Department of Homeland Security, fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car in Minneapolis.
That shooting has prompted two days of protests in Minneapolis. Officers from both ICE and Border Patrol have been deployed in cities across the United States as part of Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
While the aggressive enforcement operations have been cheered by the president’s supporters, Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the posture as an unnecessary provocation.
US officials contend criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists have increasingly used their cars as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes contradicted their claims.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement his city was now grappling with violence at the hands of federal agents and that “we cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts.”
He called on ICE to halt all its operations in the city until an investigation can be completed.
“Federal militarization undermines effective, community-based public safety, and it runs counter to the values that define our region,” Wilson said. “I will use every legal and legislative tool available to protect our residents’ civil and human rights.”
